BEIJING - China's outstanding external debt came to $585.97 billion by the end of March this year, the country's foreign exchange regulator said Thursday.

The amount does not include the outstanding external debts of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), the Macao SAR and Taiwan, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement on its website.

Of the total outstanding external debt, registered external debt accounted for $366.87 billion and the balance of trade credit accounted for $219.1 billion.

Outstanding long- and medium-term external debt accounted for 29.75 percent of the total, while outstanding short-term external debt comprised 70.25 percent, according to the statement.

In terms of types of debt, the balance of international commercial loans totaled $299.02 billion, accounting for 81.51 percent of the outstanding registered external debt.

The balance of foreign government loans and loans granted by international financial organizations amounted to $67.85 billion, accounting for 18.49 percent of the total amount.

In terms of currency structure, debt in US dollars accounted for 68.3 percent of the outstanding registered external debt, representing a decrease of 2.11 percentage points compared with that at the end of 2010.    

Debt in Japanese yen accounted for 7.68 percent, down 0.88 percentage points. Debt in euro accounted for 4 percent, down 0.41 percentage points.